


If You Say So

by linatrinch



Series: Stormpilot Tumblr Prompts [7]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Finn's like a teacher or something idk, Firefighter!Poe, M/M, Mentions of Animal Cruelty, angst as fucking hell, im dead folks, mentions of animal abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-11
Updated: 2016-05-11
Packaged: 2018-06-07 18:18:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6818977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linatrinch/pseuds/linatrinch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anon asked, "A Stormpilot mini fic based on "If You Say So" by Lea Michele, from Finn's perspective. AU or not, could be told from either way."</p>
            </blockquote>





	If You Say So

**Author's Note:**

> CW for mentions of animal cruelty because I got really into this and way too emotional.
> 
> Sorry, everyone. Sorry, sorry.
> 
> Don't listen to that song. You might die like I did.

_“I love you, Finn.”  
_

_“I love you more.”_

Finn hardly remembered the first day. They were together that morning. Spoke to him on the phone at lunch. He was told what had happened around two. They had just talked a few hours ago, and they told him it was over a little after 2 p.m. on a Tuesday. The unit was called out. Old warehouse. Bad fire. Didn’t make it out in time. He didn’t know how to act with the information. 

His first instinct was to call Rey. She at least reacted appropriately, even stayed with him for all those very blurry hours. He did remember making it back home that evening though, with her in tow. Vaguely, he remembered freaking out, but not what he did or said. Only that he blinked and was in Rey’s apartment.

The second day was numb. He didn’t go back home. Rey probably called in to work for him.

By the third day, his mind was beginning to somehow forget anything had happened at all. Sometimes he would think of him, take his phone out to call him, be worried that he hadn’t spoken to him in a few days, and- Oh.

Oh.

And somehow he just kept forgetting. Kept reaching for his phone. Kept wondering why he wasn’t home. The thoughts would come in little bursts from the back of his mind, hardly a second of attention spent on each, before he’d just. Oh.

The fourth day, he was forced out of Rey’s protective form of exile to meet with Kes. The man was shaking, looked like he hadn’t slept, blood shot eyes. And Finn would just kind of stare at him, knowing that he had to be supportive because this man he respected so much just lost a son, but it was hard to even pretend to dig up anything. He nodded when needed to and glanced away when it started to become too much.

Occasionally, Kes would ask, his large hand never straying from Finn’s, if he’d been eating, sleeping, talking. He answered with a yes, of course, though the real answer was that he wasn’t sure. This was a horrible dream, he wanted to tell him. It’s not real. It doesn’t really matter. Something like this couldn’t be real. Kes gripped his hand, “You have to let yourself feel it, son.”

“I’m not your son,” he answered easily. The nickname had started a few Christmases ago and stuck, all assuming that he legally would be someday. He used to like the nickname. Kes shook harder for a second but didn’t say anything.

Services started that night, but the casket was closed. Finn saw no point in being there, but couldn’t bring himself to leave either.

They buried him on the fifth day, and Finn finally started to feel something. It was the thought of putting him in the ground, burying him, leaving him alone six feet under the cold earth. It wasn’t right. He managed to not make a scene out of it, somehow kept himself from leaping over Shara’s grave to grab the coffin and demand they not do this to him, that he was a hero, that he deserved better than eternity in a hole. But he did break down, sinking to his knees as most of the family and friends walked away to allow him to be buried. A small cluster stayed with him, though, and Finn wasn’t sure who all it was. Rey, most likely. Leia’s voice made comforting words that he couldn’t understand. The two shadows next to him must have been Jess and Snap, two members of the unit out of the entire fire department that had shown up and shook his hand an hour ago. Kes was the one clinging to him, though, crying with him. That was the only one he knew was there for sure.

The priest left them, and the city workers kindly and patiently waited in the distance until he could pull himself together again.

Not that he ever really did.

The sixth day was a mess. Finn was angry. Finn was fucking pissed. He turned his phone off and wrecked their home. Even put the bat he had signed by Alex Rodriguez straight through the flat screen. He tore years worth of manuscripts to pieces, took a kitchen knife to the sofa, hit the standing lamp they drove four hours to IKEA for against the wall until it bent into a curve and left holes in the plaster.

It was always implied they’d spend their lives together, grow old together. Finn always stressed that he didn’t mind moving slow. They wouldn’t be able to afford a decent wedding anyway. And he was always told that he was being careful everyday, wanting nothing more than to come home again that night. Lies. All of it lies. The last three years. Nothing but lies.

He left the bed alone. The right side of the closet, the three guitars, the skillet set they waited in line for five hours on Black Friday just because they were a certain name brand, the video games and X-Box, the framed 25-cent art they found at a rummage sale, the half made coffee pot that was beginning to smell; Finn left a lot of things alone.

He yelled at the cat, though. Angry at its ignorance, at the way it looked at him with eyes peering up wide from underneath the couch. He wanted to hit it, cut it, pick it up and throw it against the wall.

When the thought occurred to him, the anger vanished. He apologized, but the thing just kept staring up at him. He kept apologizing, trying to talk through the sobs, fell to his knees again. The cat ran away from him when he reached for it, and he cried harder.

Kes found him on the seventh day. Apparently the door had been left unlocked all night, and the man looked terrified at finding the home in such a mess. When he found Finn, curled into a corner beside the closed bedroom door, he seemed to instantly realize what had happened or at least pretended to understand.

The older man took him to the kitchen silently, cleaned his hands of the cuts from broken glass even as pieces of ceramic crunched under their shoes. Finn had started crying again at some point during the process, and Kes abandoned the task to just hold him close.

He could hear his own voice from far away. “It’s not fair. He said he’d never abandon me. We were going to get married. I never told him how badly I wanted to get married. I never told him how much he meant to me. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” On and on, he continued until he didn’t have anything else to say. Whatever else there was to say, whatever made this feel like it had a point or even made it better, wouldn’t come to him no matter how much he rambled. He stopped before even realizing he had stopped, just leaning against Kes like he was somehow a pillar of strength, like he wasn’t hurting just as bad or even worse.

Kes held him tight for a long time and finally, in a shaking voice that suggested he was crying, too, muttered, “You are my son.”

Through the whole week, the back of his mind had been going over their last conversation, word for word, breath for breath, trying to find some hidden meaning in it. This was the first time the voice stopped repeating the words in the background, and he just cried openly.

They would come back. And leave. Come back and leave. Haunting him, teasing him, letting him know that he had failed at some point. Even years later, when he finally accepted that a person never really moved on from a loss like that, he would wake up to the voice sometimes.

He should have said more. He should have done more. But he hadn’t.

_“I love you, Finn.”_

_“I love you more.”  
_

_“… If you say so.”_

_-click-_

**Author's Note:**

> so uh Sorry! Again. Feel free to come to my house and punch me in the face. I deserve it.
> 
> Send me some more prompts on my [tumblr](http://linatrinch.tumblr.com/ask), guys. One of these days, I'll get a list of prompts for you folks to choose from, maybe even put it on my ask page for you guys. Until that day comes, I'm afraid you must think of your own, but feel free to go check anyway. lol
> 
> Thanks for the submissions so far! ♥


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